Canada

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

A acorn worm, known scientifically as enteropneusts - is shown in this undated handout photo.  THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO

Researchers have unearthed evidence of a strangely shaped creature, OK, it looks like a phallus, that lived more than 500 million years ago in the famed Burgess Shale fossil beds in BC's Yoho National Park.

However, it's not just its form that makes the ancient animal so intriguing, but the fact that the newly discovered species pushes the fossil record back 200 million years to the Cambrian period and fills in an evolutionary blank that connects it with a group of modern-day beach-dwelling worms.

These acorn worms, known scientifically as enteropneusts, are decidedly phallic in appearance.

Their ancient forerunner, dubbed Spartobranchus tenuis, had a flexible body consisting of a short proboscis, collar and narrow elongate trunk terminating in a bulbous structure, which may have served as an anchor.

The animals would have lived in or on a silt-covered sea bottom an estimated 505 million years ago.